An EU regulation designed to curb the dominance of major tech platforms and foster contestable, fair digital markets. While the GDPR regulates privacy and the Digital Services Act (DSA) regulates online content and ad transparency, the DMA targets market power. Fully enforceable since March 2024, the DMA prevents tech giants from abusing their control over ecosystems to lock in users, restrict data access, or unfairly promote their own services at the expense of third-party businesses.
What Defines a Gatekeeper?
The European Commission designates companies as Gatekeepers if they provide Core Platform Services (CPS), such as search engines, app stores, social networks, operating systems, web browsers, messaging apps, and online advertising services, and meet specific criteria:
- Significant Market Impact: Annual revenue within the European Economic Area (EEA) of at least €7.5 billion in each of the last three years, or a market capitalization of at least €75 billion.
- Key Gateway for Businesses: Operates a CPS with more than 45 million monthly active end users in the EU and over 10,000 yearly active business users.
- Entrenched Position: Meets the user thresholds in each of the last three financial years.
Designated Gatekeepers
Key companies designated under the DMA include Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, ByteDance (TikTok), Meta (Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp), and Microsoft.
Core Do's and Don'ts Impacting MarTech and AdTech
The DMA introduces strict ex-ante rules ("do's and don'ts") that fundamentally reshape how marketers leverage Big Tech platforms for data collection, audience targeting, and ad operations:
- Ban on Cross-Service Data Combining Without Consent: Gatekeepers can no longer combine personal data collected from their Core Platform Service with data from other services (or third parties) unless the user explicitly grants GDPR-compliant consent.
- Prohibition of Self-Preferencing: Gatekeepers are banned from ranking their own products or services more favorably in search results or marketplaces compared to third-party competitors.
- Open Data Access for Business Users: Gatekeepers must provide business users (and advertisers) with free, real-time, continuous access to aggregated and unaggregated data generated by their activity on the platform.
- App Store & Operating System Unbundling: Apple and Google must allow third-party app stores, direct sideloading of applications, and alternative in-app payment processing systems on iOS and Android devices.
DMA vs. GDPR vs. DSA: The Triad Comparison
| Dimension | GDPR | DSA | DMA |
| Primary Goal | Protect fundamental right to data privacy | Ensure online safety & ad transparency | Create open, fair, and competitive digital markets |
| Target Audience | All entities processing personal data | Intermediary platforms & hosting services | Designated Gatekeeper tech giants |
| Martech Focus | Cookie consent & legal processing bases | Ban on sensitive profiling & mandatory ad labeling | Unlocking walled gardens & stopping cross-service tracking |
| Maximum Fines | Up to 4% of global annual turnover | Up to 6% of global annual turnover | Up to 10% of global annual turnover (20% for repeat offenses) |
Operational Action Plan for Digital Marketers
- Adopt Signal Solutions: Gatekeepers now strictly require conversion signals to confirm explicit user consent before accepting ad data for targeting or attribution.
- Diversify Beyond Walled Gardens: Leverage open ecosystems, such as alternative app stores, web-based checkout flows, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels, to decrease reliance on single-platform distribution.
- Audit First-Party Data Interoperability: Take advantage of DMA-mandated data portability requirements to extract your brand's platform performance data into your clean rooms or Data Warehouses (BigQuery, Snowflake).
- Monitor Organic Visibility Shifts: Adjust SEO and local search strategies, as gatekeeper self-preferencing bans alter how search engine result pages (SERPs) render rich snippets, shopping boxes, and map integrations across the EU.
